If you’ve given talks in our events, you can find your talk videos published on our channel. Not only that — you can also customize your video metadata to increase audience engagement (which in turn helps us grow the channel).

For example, you can:

• Customize the video title to make it more engaging.
• Improve the thumbnail to make it stand out.
• Add timestamps to highlight key points in your talk.
• Add a description that summarizes the content of your talk.
• Add tags to help viewers discover your talk.
• Add subtitles to make sure everyone can understand your talk.
• Include links to relevant resources.
• Localize the title and description to internationalize your video.

All of our video metadata is managed on GitHub. To make changes, send us a pull request! Once your PR is merged, the video metadata will be automatically updated.

Livestream archives

Livestream archives can be found on the Creatorsgarten Facebook page.

Common audio/video issues

When livestreaming

• Audio too quiet. Check in OBS that when speaking, the sound level is in the yellow color zone between -20 and -9 dB

• Audio output works in one channel only. Check in OBS and make sure that there are 2 volume bars (left and right channel). If the problem from the source signal cannot be fixed, go to Advanced Audio Settings and make it mono.

When casting remote talks

• Sound echos. Mute yourself as much as possible when not speaking, so that sound flows in one way.

When preparing VODs

• Video and audio not synchronizing. In a video editor software, detach the audio from video, so that they can be moved independently.

• Issues that interrupt the presentation. For example, connectivity problems, technical issues. They might be safe to cut out from the VOD.

• Audio output works in one channel only. To fix in post, convert the audio to mono.

• Microphone feedback loop and noise. To fix in post, if you have Final Cut Pro you can use the Voice Isolation feature.

• Missing presentation slides. They can be added in post.

Preparing videos

Work on preparing VODs are being coordinated on Airtable.

Each talk goes through several stages before they are uploaded to the YouTube channel.

1. Source — Obtain the source material, either recorded in OBS, or downloaded back from Facebook Live. Re-upload it to YouTube (unlisted) for easy viewing, and also upload it to OneDrive for easy downloading by teammates.

2. Timestamp — Determine the time range within the source material that contains the talk.

   • It does not need to be precise, just a hint for other teammates on where to find the talk.

3. Slice — Cut the source video around the time range and put it in its own file. This results in a smaller file that’s easier to work with.

   • This step can be automated. The cut script can be used to cut the video in a lossless manner using ffmpeg. It generates a .source.mp4 file. One minute of padding is added to the video to account for imprecise timestamps in step 2.

4. Fix — Perhaps the most resource-consuming part of this process. Watch the talk to identify the issues in the video, and fix them if possible.

   • Examples: Cut out the part where the talk is interrupted by a technical issue. Cut out the part where people are just passing the mic around. Apply noise reduction. Fix audio channel issues. Boost the audio level if source file is extremely quiet.

   • In simple cases, this can be done via a simple video editing software like iMovie.

   • There are some commonly-used FFmpeg snippets.

5. Upload — The video is uploaded to YouTube as unlisted.

Publishing videos

1. Import into GitHub — After the video is uploaded, import it into the creatorsgarten/videos repository. This will create the metadata files.

2. Prepare the metadata — Update the metadata files. When the files are updated, they will automatically be reflected in YouTube.

3. Publish — When the published property is set to true, then the video becomes Public on YouTube. (Otherwise it’s Unlisted.)

If you’d like to help, you can find us in the #📼-vod channel on Creatorsgarten’s Discord server and mention to “@VOD Team”.